No one is happy when the day begins with a customer calling to say they get an error message when visiting your website. A visitor may see a message indicating that the website is not found, the domain is available for purchase, a database cannot be accessed or that the website is offline. Here are the most common reasons websites don’t display and how to avoid it.

1. Someone “hacked” or maliciously interrupted your website

Just as viruses can find their way onto your local computer, websites can be compromised too. Hackers love to create programs that sneak in and corrupt code and take down your entire website. Public and internally websites should be protected in a variety of ways to make sure this doesn’t happen. At Landau Digital we are experts at restoring hacked sites and implementing security measures to help prevent future hacking.

2. The hosting or domain fees have not been paid

If you catch either of these issues quickly, you may be able to remedy them by simply paying the bill. Many web hosts and domain registrars set you account to renew automatically. If that is the case, your credit card information may not up to date.

3. The host server is down

The easy solution is to contact your hosting company or by checking with your IT group for internally hosted sites. A professionally hosted site should have redundant servers and be able to get your site live quickly. If you continue to experience downtime and if the downtime is over an hour, look for another hosting solution. Sometimes shared hosting environment are prone to downtime so consider upgrading your hosting plan to a VPS or dedicated account. Sometimes a new hosting company is appropriate. Look at our hosting recommendations if you need to consider that option.

4. Your visitor is inside a restricted network

It is not unusual for visitors who are inside a firewall to loose access to your site because the security settings or workstation settings have changes. Sometimes public wifi networks have similar issues. So ask your visitor if that may be the case.I attempted to access the internet in talking to a potential client from their office and could not access many public websites because of this. (Needless to say, I didn’t gain that client. It is hard to tell a client that their IT is poorly configured.)

5. Something in the basic website code failed

This may be because of an incorrect edit to these files. Occasionally files become corrupted because of many unknown reasons. These reasons include corruption on the host servers and read/write errors from accessing files. Sometimes the hosting company makes server upgrades without notifying you, and suddenly your website is not compatible. These types of issues are unpredictable. If your host does not provide a good backup, plan to look for another host. Regardless of your host, you should have a backup process that stores backups apart from the host server. Check with your developer to see what options are available for your site.

How you recover from a hack or virus depends in part on your host’s security measures. Some hosts quarantine websites they detect as compromised. Your first steps are to check the date of your locally stored backup and then seek assistance if you are unsure what to do.